


Retribution

by ishtarelisheba



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Blood, F/M, Rumbelle Showdown, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 05:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3797707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishtarelisheba/pseuds/ishtarelisheba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumbelle Showdown 2015 - Round One - (prompts: ice truck killer!au, ankle, “as you wish”)</p><p>Sort of a Dexter-inspired Rumbelle AU in which Belle is a cop and Gold is a private detective, each of whom tends to get in the other's way while hunting for the Ice Truck Killer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retribution

Waking up to find oneself in a small space draped in plastic sheeting was not the most comforting thing in the world. Discovering that one was secured to a tilt table was even less so.

The last thing he could recall was taking Belle the ever sarcastic box of chocolate filled donuts. Heading across the station parking lot. And then a sharp sting... below his... ear...

_Oh._

That didn't bode well.

He attempted to turn his head, only to find it immobile, too. Panic hit him and he fought to try and get free, accomplishing little more than panicking himself further.

"Ah-ah-ah." The languid sound came from a position somewhere behind him. There was the noise of metal - grinding? Filing?

His stomach turned as he realized, no, it was the sound of something being _sharpened_.

"You might try and beg," the voice lilted. "Hasn't worked for anyone so far, but you never can tell."

Gold ground his teeth together, recognizing his captor. "I'd rather end up scattered across town with the rest of them than beg you for a goddamn thing."

There was the scrape of a chair, followed by perhaps a dozen agonizingly slow footsteps, and the man loomed over him, all cold blue eyes and sharp grin. "As you wish," he hissed near Gold's ear.

"I know who you are." He wasn't fool enough to think he could talk his way out of this, but all evidence pointed to Jones having a temper. If he were lucky, maybe he could provoke the sorry excuse for a human being into getting it over with, killing him quickly, rather than ending up another horror story coroner's report.

"Vigilante justice not going so well, is it?" Jones chuckled.

"I don't know," Gold snarled. "I got half the job done, didn't I?"

Jones froze for a second before launching at him, and his shoulder exploded in sudden, searing agony. He cried out, his body jerking with the reflexive attempt to get rid of the source of pain.

" _She was my wife!_ " Jones roared, flecks of spittle flying from his lips.

Gold groaned, teeth clenched so hard he felt a molar chip. "We'll not get into whose wife she was," he managed, his voice thin. "Point was the things she did. With _you_."

"My Milah was a genius," Jones said, and Gold heard a disturbing wistfulness in his words. "Never saw anyone could dispatch a whore handily as she could. _She_ taught _me_ things."

"She was a vicious murderer. Nothing but."

Jones bared his teeth, twisting the weapon deeper. "She had potential. And you- to think the likes of you destroyed her?"

"I wonder how many people I saved by putting her down," Gold said with a grin he had to force, and his remark had precisely the effect he hoped.

Jones ripped the thing from Gold's shoulder, and his vision darkened for a moment with the pain. He saw something metal raised over him, then moving toward his face. Gold expected it to be his last moment, to feel the fleeting pain of something crashing through his skull. But Jones stopped just short.

"Oh, but that's far too easy. No. I think you'll suffer. I want you to suffer even a _fraction_ of how I've been suffering this last year without Milah by my side." He paced around Gold's head, out of sight, and back around the other side to press the point of the weapon into his opposite shoulder, digging it in slowly. "I'll kill you. Eventually" His mouth split and stretched into a smile again. The one he and Milah had used to lure in unsuspecting women. "And then I'll kill that little trollop you run about with. What's her name - Lieutenant Belle, isn't it? The entrance to her Main Street apartment is quite dark. I'll take my time with her, too. I think she deserves something extra, though. I've been... How should I put it? _Pent up_."

Gold struggled again, but it wasn't the pain or fear now. It didn't matter what happened to him, what Jones did to him, but _not Belle_. "You won't lay a fucking finger on her!" he snarled, trying to turn his hands so he might have a chance to claw through the plastic holding him to the table.

"Ah, but I will. Fingers, fists. Other parts of my glorious anatomy," Jones goaded, putting more weight behind driving the point into Gold. "And oh, but your little Belle will _scream_... Tell me, what color should I paint her nails? It was Milah's thing, that, but I thought as an homage."

Tears brimmed in Gold's eyes. He may as well have killed Belle himself, for his part in provoking it.

Jones was true to his word, as far as torture went. Gold lost all sense of time. He could have been there for days or hours, for all he could tell.

He could smell his own blood on the air.

Jones made a sound of disgust deep in his throat. Gold felt the weapon being pulled from a wound dug into his left side, between his ribs, and there was the sound of metal on metal as it was set down. The table he was on began to tilt, his head lowering as the hydraulics beneath whirred. The wounds - his shoulders, his right ankle and right hand, his side - they throbbed anew as what blood was left in his body changed pressure with the new position. Jones squatted down where Gold could see him, turning a scalpel within his victim's line of sight.

"You're not worth more," Jones decided, pushing a large bowl beneath Gold's head. "The sooner you're dead, the sooner I can get to your girl." He pressed the fine edge of the scalpel's blade against the side of Gold's neck, and jerked it quickly, cutting deep.

Gold felt his blood trickle hot along his cold skin, behind his ear and up into his hairline. He grew lightheaded, and everything around him felt as if it shuddered.

There was a resounding _bang!_ from somewhere very far away, and the space flooded with flashing lights.

"Drop your weapon and get down on the ground!"

Belle's voice. But she was _so far away_. She could still escape. Gold tried to call out to her to tell her to run, but his tongue wouldn't work. He didn't have enough breath, anyway.

He saw Jones move, hand raised with the scalpel turned to stab, and there was a gunshot, the smell of cordite, a _thud_ as Jones' knees hit the floor of the truck. Jones tried to get back to his feet, grabbing the edge of the table, and Gold felt the world shift sideways. His body jarred as the table turned over.

Something fell in front of his face. A silver hook, smeared with blood. So that's what Jones had been digging into him with. The shape and depth of his victims' wounds made sense now. Another gunshot, and Jones fell, eyes and mouth frozen wide open.

"Rumi? Rumi!" Belle cried, and she was down on her knees beside him, pulling at the plastic. "Hold on- you have to hold on."

The bowl meant to catch his blood had tipped over in the commotion, spilling across the floor and running toward his head. It was cold now; he could feel it soaking into his hair. He'd had that much left in him?

He saw blue light glint off a knife in Belle's hand. She sliced open the plastic and he tumbled to the floor. It didn't hurt. It was cold - _he_ was cold - but everything felt oddly soft.

"Oh God, oh God-" Belle whimpered, tugging him onto his back, kneeling over him. She pulled at her uniform jacket until she got it off, rolled it up, and pressed it to his neck. There was a bright shock of pain as she pushed it hard against the wound. "Where are the paramedics?!" she shrieked over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he mouthed. He didn't know if she saw, but he had to try. He felt tears run back down his temples.

"No! Rumi, no! I swear to God, if you die in my arms, I'll never forgive you. I don't care how much 'sorry' you have, Rumi Gold, I'll never forgive you!"

She would be okay. Belle would be okay. He looked at her until his vision failed. He felt her other hand holding his face, her fingertips biting into his cheeks as she continued to demand with increasing insistence that he stay alive. She was warm. He thought it should be cold there in the dark, but she was _so warm_ …

**Author's Note:**

> I'll do a conclusion (and maybe a prequel, to actually set the stage, since this bit started _in media res_ ) for this when I have time, to tie it up. I apologize for the cliffhanger.


End file.
